I don't think people truly understand what wealth discrepancy is. Here it is. The top 400 wealthy individuals in the US hold 1/8 of the wealth
in the US. Got that? 0.00016% of the US population controls 20% of
the wealth. Their wealth has grown 13% in the last year. They don't
need a tax cut. They don't need loopholes. They don't deserve a
disproportionate voice in politics just because they can spend their
opinion into prominence.

Gah! Canada agrees with Stephen Harper? We agree that the Iranian embassy should have been shut down? Well. I guess that proves Canadians don't know shit about International Relations.

If they're so eager to reform their own pensions, why don't they stick it in their next Omnibus? In fact, why don't we just write all of the laws that we plan on passing in the next 20 years down on a piece of paper, sign that shit and just get this done?

Monday, September 17, 2012

Yep. Sure looks like the Conservatives are in "cruise control". Just like real estate values are "holding steady".

Wow. The Harper Government has finally "agreed" to stop supporting asbestos mining. The awesome thing is that they are actually "blaming"
the PQ Government for this decision, as they (the PQ) took the lead on
made up their own minds. I can't even come up with an equivalent to
illustrate how insanely ludicrous this is. Here goes though. Say you
have a big family. You're the father. And one of your 10 children is a
crack addict. For years and years you support your crack addicted son.
You give him money for crack. You threaten to beat anybody up that
complains about his crack use. You yell at the police when they show up
to bust him and claim that "crack isn't harmful" and all that stuff.
You get angry at all of your neighbours and other children when they
try to help your son to stop smoking crack. You're the ultimate crack
enabler. And then, your son finally comes to his senses, checks in to
re-hab and decides that he'll never smoke crack again. And you
begrudgingly write your neighbours, children and local police an e-mail
telling them that you've finally caved in to their ludicrous no-crack
policies. But it's all your sons fault. You'd happily roll along
buying him crack if he would just stop being so selfish.

Grrr....Stupid experts getting in the way of reasonable policy! Here,
some schmuck claims to know more than our beloved leader about what is
going on in Iran. So what if this guy used to be our "Ambassador" to
Iran. What does that even mean? He should just stick to...whatever it
is he does while he's "Ambassadoring". Not lecturing our beloved leader
on how to deal with Iran. And another one.

And I’ve been
thinking about this a lot lately. With all of the “improvements” in our
lifetime, why are we so much worse off than our parents? Why can’t we
buy homes for reasonable prices? Why are our wages stagnant? Why is
our environment shit? Why can’t we invest for the long term with some
reasonable expectation of a return? Well, because we’re the fools
holding the bag on a Ponzi scheme.

So, out of nowhere, Canada has broken off diplomatic ties with Iran. There's no crisis. No incident. Just...time to no longer talk to those guys. It happens to be on the same day they announce five new Senate appointments...but I couldn't really make sense of this. But the National Post put it in perspective. Oh Israel appeasement. What haven't you done for us lately? (and Iran is pissed)

Hey. Let’s talk about real
estate. Despite statistics showing a decline in house prices and an
admittance that sales numbers are way down…hell, if we just use a
different statistic “prices remain high”. Look at that fucking graph!
This shit is not sustainable. Not by outside money. Not by drug
money. Not by Vancouver being the 3rd most liveable City (didn’t we
used to be #1?). You’re fucking delusional. Prices are going to come
down.

I don't know if he's totally full of shit, but a dude in the comments section of this article just laid out a plan for how BC could become a
wireless internet province by piggybacking the smart meter
infrastructure. Very, very cool, if possible. It's kind of sad that
the best idea that I've seen in some time came from a Tyee article
comment section. I actually e-mailed this link to my MLA, Christy Clark.

Oh. Some good news. Bruce Willis is actually becoming a bit of a copyright crusader! Yes, he’s trying to figure out a way to
make sure, and I’m not making this up, to make sure that his children
have access to his iTunes catalogue if he dies! Why anybody would pay
money to “own” a digital something that is not really theirs is beyond
me.

Oh man. Real Estate. First, the Vancouver Sun had this article. They changed the headline after I posted my comment, but the initial headline said "Vancouver home prices continue to rise..." Yet, nowhere
in the article does it say that housing prices in Vancouver have risen.
It says that the percentage of income required to own a home has risen
by 2.2 percent to 91.0 percent (which is obscene and a dramatic
indicator that this is unsustainable)...but this does not support the
claim that house prices have risen. A totally bogus and deceptive
headline. And then you look at this graph...and it shows you just how clueless these writers are. Throw this StatsCan page into the mix with median household incomes....boy. Let's buy some Vancouver Real Estate!

Hey look everybody! Alberta, with all their oil money and Conservative principles...they're looking at a massive deficit. Of course, the comment trolls are claiming that they're not Conservative enough and that's the problem! I thought everybody in Alberta was a hard working taxpayer supporting the rest of Canada? Why do they even need social programs?
Imagine that you had this business...you could borrow as much money as
you wanted for super cheap. And then you could turn around and lend it
out for a larger rate, guaranteed. So the more money you lent out, the
more money you brought in. And you could release all kinds of reports
and self-serving "research" that encouraged people to borrow
more-and-more from you because things can't possibly go down. Yes, you might be able to make gobs and gobs of money as well. Of course, anybody that points out that the banks seem to be making an awful lot of money off the backs of Canadians is just "jealous".